Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
A new prison then.
A very, very nice prison—but still, a prison.
Once he’s gone, I take stock of the room. We’re on the second floor and the windows all face the street, which means I can’t just jump out of them. I’m sure the house has surveillance cameras watching the front and someone will catch me if I try to get away in that direction. Maybe in the middle of the night, but even then, it’s a long fall to the sidewalk. Even if I had the balls to make the drop, I’m not sure I could physically walk away from it without a broken ankle or two.
There’s one bedroom and another room set up like a home gym and an office. That’s good—at least there’s a treadmill I can use. The bathroom is gorgeous, all marble and shiny chrome, and the main bedroom is immaculate. It looks like nobody ever sleeps in here. The closet’s full of suits and nothing else, and it’s like all of his personality is kept somewhere else, all the little touches you’d expect to find in someone’s life totally absent.
Who the hell is Luca Valverde? I wanted to catch a glimpse of my husband in this house but right now it’s like the place was sanitized before he brought me over. There’s nothing in the drawers, nothing under the bed, no dust-covered quarters and dimes, no missing socks, no forgotten receipts. There’s nothing to indicate my husband ever lived in this place at all.
And yet he says this is where he grew up. I try to imagine being a little boy in this strange house and find it hard to picture. My own childhood wasn’t exactly happy, but at least I had my brothers and there were always uncles and cousins and aunts hanging around the house. It was chaos, but it was life—this place seems like it’s a mausoleum, like it’s a tomb.
I don’t know how anyone could’ve survived growing up in a place like this.
But maybe he didn’t. Nobody gets through a life in the crime families, Greek or Italian or whatever, without some deep and lasting scars.
There’s a knock on the door. I pause in my search of the closet, which so far has turned up a used scratch-off lottery ticket that actually won five bucks plus a whole lot of dust, and step back into the main room. There’s another knock and I look around, hoping that Luca might appear somehow and tell me what to do—we hadn’t discussed this situation and I don’t want to do something dangerous. But the knock comes again, more insistent this time, and I finally decide I can’t ignore it forever and open the door a crack.
An older man is standing in the hall. He’s medium height, dark hair, getting a little heavy in the middle. His eyes are dark brown and he grins huge, almost bashful as he gives me a little wave.
“You must be Kacia,” he says, his head bobbing up and down, his jowls shaking. “My name’s Vinny Dragonetti. I thought I’d come up and say hello, introduce myself properly, all that good stuff, since you’re the new girl in town.”
“Uh, hello, nice to meet you,” I say and peer down the hall, hoping to spot Luca coming toward us, but it’s empty. “I was actually just unpacking—”
“Here’s the thing about this old Valverde house,” he says, striding into the room past me uninvited. “The ceiling’s got eyes, you know what I mean? Literally, it’s got cameras everywhere, except in the bedrooms. Well, except in the bedrooms where important people stay. And there are always lots of people hanging around. You want a little advice from me? Install a lock on that door and never open it when someone knocks. Get one of them peephole things too so you know who’s on the other side. Lots of dangerous people in this place. Except for me, I’m harmless.” He grins and looks around. “I haven’t been in this room in a long while. Luca doesn’t come around much anymore.”
“I thought he lived here part of the time.”
“Nah, he’s got his own place, I just think his old man wants to keep you close for a while. Make sure you can be trusted.”
I hesitate, not sure how to respond to that, but Vinny doesn’t seem to care if I’m taken aback. He walks to the drink tray and pours himself a whiskey. He sloshes it around in the tumbler and takes a sip.
“Say what you want about us Italians, and I bet you’ve got a lot to say, but we know our wine and our liquor. This is good stuff if you haven’t tried it yet.”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“That’s a shame.” He takes another sip. “I bet you miss your home. You probably had tons of wine over there in fucking Greece. Or maybe that weird lemon shit, what’s it called?”